OK, 30-minute creativity challenge. Go.

Why isn't this pad part of a larger complex, and who put it there? Let's go with a roguish angle, and bring in some modern elements.

MACRO
There's a small network of outlying, sturdy platforms put there with major backing from a local criminal syndicate. The planet has seen some ground conflict recently (note shell-sized craters), and they're stepping into areas the government would normally handle where it's profitable for them. If you want to represent this dynamic in the area as a whole, do some serious reading re: this reality in Latin America, Lebanon, or even some large American cities.

OPERATIONAL
The criminal syndicate (Syndikat) makes the usual money on fees, and of course they've created shipment nodes where it's easier to bring in any sort of cargo to places they effectively control. That's the obvious business case.

The less obvious level involves the arrays of sensors quietly built into the pad, and to the systems that hook up incoming and outgoing ships for manifests, minor repairs, etc. The idea is to get a strong idea of exactly what's on board each ship, so the syndicate can accurately track trade patterns and inform its own buying, smuggling, etc. Not to mention the potential for "kompromat" as a potential lever with select rivals.

The syndicate uses these "Spaceport Lily-Pads" (SLPs, or "Slips") as a training grounds for its own slicers (crackers), and as a Red Team exercise for its own smuggling ships. Can you hide smuggled cargo from your own side, before you have to hide it in major spaceports?

The syndicate may run the Slips very directly, or the slicers may be separate from Slip Capo and part of very different groups.

SOME SCENARIOS

– PCs are trying to bring something important into a planet, and use a Slip to do it. What happens if the Slip's slicers become aware of what the PCs carry?

– PCs are investigators, and an incoming item is physically dangerous. Dangerous enough that a Capo might be inclined to cooperate in fingering it. But the slicers would rather keep their capabilities unknown, even at local cost.

This scenario can go so many ways. What if the PCs try to "slice the slicers" here, since Slips don't have the top teams? If they somehow succeed and realize there's more information available than there should be? Do they grasp the implications? What of the slicers get pulled out by their part of the Syndikat due to the danger, but the local Capo doesn't? What if the PCs convince the Syndikat and get tipped off when the item arrives, without being told how this happens. BUT, they have to do a "parallel construction" that explains how they got the bad guys without the Syndikat's help. Because if they show the Syndikat's hand in this, they're marked for death.

– PCs could be part of the Syndikat, and some trends in the sensor data on the Slips becomes very interesting. That information begins driving adventures.